Zeta Vortex: Queens
by LA Knight
Summary: It started with a slap and ended in all-out war. Now, the chess game of battle begins, and the queens of Pillar High School are not about to lose to a nobody like Alyssa Carde... even if she is not everything she seems.
1. War 0 Alyssa

War.

I'd never thought about it. I'd never considered joining the military, or given much thought to things like the war on terrorism. Most of the books I read were general YA fiction, so they didn't really talk about fighting. It wasn't a part of my life. When the 9/11 attacks happened, my parents just turned off the television. No one in my family mentioned the Iraq war. I'd learned about other wars - Vietnam, Korea, the Civil and Revolutionary Wars - but only in history class.

Then we moved and I landed in the middle of a battlefield.

On one side: the witches. On the other side: even more witches. And caught smack in the middle: the humans.

And of course, me and Jack.


	2. Gang 0 Alyssa

What is a gang?

When people talk about gang violence, they talk about the Bloods and the Crips. They talk about teenagers from ghettos killing each other on the streets with illegal guns. People always mention drugs like cocaine, talk about prostitution and teen pregnancy and drive-by shootings and death. People think about movies like Freedom Writers and Take the Lead. They think of black kids and Mexican kids and all kinds of kids fighting to survive in a world gone to hell, kids struggling to survive the war of the streets.

We had gangs in my school, but that's not how it worked.

None of us came from the ghetto. I doubt anyone owned a real gun - maybe a hunting rifle, but that's it. We didn't kill each other - at least, not outright. There were no drive-by shootings or rapes or kids beating each other up over territory. We had something way, way worse.

Geneva Carson and Lily Whitmoor.


	3. White Punch 0 Alyssa

Lily decided I was up for being axed on my first day at Pillar High School.

When you walk onto the Pillar campus, you realize you just stepped off the bus into Posh Land. Everyone has a Mercedes or a Viper. Everyone wears designer shades to block the desert sun, walks around in Prada shoes and Armani clothes, and carries Gucci purses. Everyone has a Droid phone and perfectly manicured nails - even the guys.

Everyone but me.

I'm Alyssa Carde, and I was as neutral as Switzerland. I was also the chick who just fell onto the set for the Stepford Students and couldn't seem to figure out how the heck she got there.

Ignoring the freaky supermodel girls shooting me unfathomable looks and darting past guys with killer smiles and serial killer eyes, I managed to wiggle through the front doors. It wasn't that everyone at Pillar was hot. There were lots of kids with acne, messy hair, baby fat, muffin tops, and chapped lips. That wasn't it. But they all had _something_, something that drew the eye, made you look twice.

It was enough to drive me nuts.

I had learned at an early age to blend. No one should've been looking twice at me. But because I was so nondescript, I stuck out like a sore thumb against the backdrop of snotty rich kids in designer jeans. No problem for me, though. I couldn't have cared less. I just wanted to get through my senior year and disappear, maybe hit BYU on my way out of the public eye. They had a great English program, and my dad was an alumnus.

Contemplating the future has led to the downfall of many: Hitler, Napoleon, and even George Bush. But I'd never expected it to be mine.

Thinking about my college plans forced me to not look where I was going, thus forcing me to smack right into some blond girl in white jeans and a white cashmere sweater. Without a word other than a sharp exclamation of "ugh" she turned around and slapped me, as hard as she could, across the face.

My mouth dropped open. My cheek was on fire.

Then I spoke.

Bad idea.

"Bitch, you are so dead," and I slugged her right in her perfect, surgically-plumped little mouth.

I found out later this was Lily Whitmoor.

After I got hauled into the Principal's office.


	4. Threat 0 Alyssa

Do you have any idea what fifty-year-old-bald-guy-with-a-beer-belly spit tastes like?

Well, let's hope you never find out. To make sure that happens, stay as far away from Pillar High School as you possibly can. Like, vacate most of northeastern America if possible. Just a warning: if Principal Arnold Showalter finds you, it's already too late.

Principal Showalter was busy introducing me to the taste of his saliva. No, we were not making out. You guys are incredibly sick, sick people. Instead, he was yelling at me. Showalter spat. A lot. And every time I was unfortunate and stupid enough to try and refute any of what he was saying, he would ruthlessly cut me off, and fifty-year-old-bald-guy saliva found its nasty way onto my taste buds.

"An unprovoked attack on a fellow student on your first day-"

"Oh, no, sir, I hit her first," the blond told him.

I blinked in surprise. A confession of guilt from a face-slapping mutant she-witch? Not what I'd seen in my horoscope this morning.

The wind went out of Showalter's sails and he stared at the girl. Good. I'd been concerned about the poor geezer having the apocalyptic conniption and dying of heart failure. He looked like his parents hailed from an eggplant farm. I idly wondered if he was a plant-human recombinant life form.

Yes, I actually think about stuff like that.

"You don't need to worry about it, sir," the girl went on, smiling a pretty smile. Was she actually twirling one those burnished gold curls around her fingers? I thought I might gag. How cutesy could one five-foot-nine teenage girl get without going overboard? If I kept watching this, I'd fall into a sugar coma and die. She was still talking. "I'm sure me and the new girl can work it out between ourselves."

"My name's Alyssa," I informed her archly. "Not 'new girl.'"

"Pleased, I'm sure."

Who said that these days?

"Lily... well, if you think it's best," Showalter said.

Whoa.

Somehow, Blondie and I found our way out of the Principal's cramped little office and in the now-deserted hallway of the main school building. Not so much as a stray locker slammed. We were totally alone. There weren't even any teachers clearing the halls of stragglers.

I waited for her to hit me again. Instead, she turned her huge, doe-brown eyes on me and grinned disarmingly. I frowned. What was her game, anyway?

"I'm Lily Whitmoor. You must be Alyssa Carde."

I nodded.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life," Lily practically sang out. "And bitch, you are so dead."

And she walked away.


	5. Impressed 0 Jack

I was impressed.

Most humans didn't just recover like that from being slapped by Lily. Usually, they ended up on the ground and stayed there.

But not this human.

Not only had she stayed on her feet, she'd hit Lily back, actually punched her in the face. It intrigued me. Where had this girl come from? She had to be the new one, Alyssa. As far as the school files said, Alyssa was straight up human, going back at least ten generations. How had she managed to stand up to Lily?

I was waiting for Lily when she came out of the principal's office, watched while staying out of sight as she threw the new girl's words back in her face and then stormed off towards me.

"Problems?" I asked casually.

The glare from Lily's electric acid eyes would've slashed me open to the bone if I'd been a normal human. But I wasn't either one - normal or human. I grinned, flashing my teeth at the witch next to me. She huffed.

"That girl hit me. She actually hit me."

"Yeah, I saw that. Why didn't you dodge?"

She stared up at me, her eyes wide, and then her hand snaked out and slapped me across the face. I didn't bother to pretend that it hurt. Well, that it hurt me. I could tell by the way she snatched her hand back and blew on her palm that it stung. I just shook my head at her. Lily was a big slapper. Didn't she realize that was a bad idea?

"She shouldn't have even tried to hit me!" Lily snarled. "Doesn't she know who I am?"

"Probably not. Most humans don't believe in you, duckies."

Lily spilled out a stream of profanity until we got to the door of our astronomy class. I just laughed at her. She punched me in the arm, but not hard enough to hurt herself again. Maybe she'd finally learned.

This Alyssa would be a good thing for Pillar High.


	6. Art 0 Alyssa

Okay, like that hadn't been creepy as hell.

I found my way to my history class and sat down in the back. I had a pass from Principal Showalter, so that wasn't a problem. Good thing - I liked being on time and hated being marked tardy. It was just a pet peeve of mine. If I'd been marked late because of a meeting with a principal about some stupid blonde who'd hauled off and slapped me, well... we were gonna have some issues to work out.

History wasn't a big deal. I got good grades through hours of studying because I wanted to go to BYU. Well, actually, just I wanted to go to college and BYU was the only place I could easily get a scholarship, because of my grades and my dad.

Went through history and landed in art.

My teacher was a hippie.

Wow.

She wore a knee-length, tie-dyed dress of blue and green over blue jeans. Most of the staff I'd seen up until now wore blouses and skirts or slacks and button-down shirts. Add the dangling earrings on the teacher's ears, silver hoops with blue and green dyed feathers, and you had Ms. O'Brien, the art teacher.

"Okay, everyone, since this is the first day, we've got some new people," our teacher said. She had a slight southern drawl, just a hint under her words. Running one hand through her thick, brown hair, she added, "So just so you all know - you better pick someone you can stand to sit next to for a hundred minutes every day, because you're gonna be stuck with your partner for the rest of the year. You've got five minutes starting now."

Didn't care.

People could walk up to me and sit if they wanted to. I just sat down in the back. Why? Because Lily, apparently queen bee of Pillar High, was perched carefully in the front of the room, her plastic butt propped on her table. But the guy next to her....

For a minute, I thought I'd been starving for eye candy, because my mouth dropped open and I started drooling. Who was that guy? Then I remembered to fish my brain out of the fish tank I'd accidentally deposited it into at the start of class. If that gorgeous blond guy was standing next to Lily, then he was probably Lily's boyfriend. And if he was Lily's boyfriend, I needed to avoid him because I'd socked Lily in the face earlier.

Thinking about it, I realized my knuckles hurt. Glancing down, I saw a spread of pale blue across the knobby bones. Great, bruises.

"That looks painful."

I jumped. Looking up, I stared into a pair of warm, dancing obsidian eyes and felt my mouth pop open again. There was no help for it - I gawped like a fish.

It was the guy!


	7. Seat 0 Jack

Lily was going to throw a fit.

The idea made me smile.

People seemed to think I was Lily Whitmoor's boyfriend. It was the only excuse the idiot humans at Pillar High could come up with to explain why I was always around her. Knowing the truth about mine and Lily's relationship would give them nightmares. But it was our relationship that made me bait her all the time. If talking to the new girl would piss her off, I was all for it.

I darted through the gaggle of kids trying to find partners, making my way to the back of the classroom. There she was, examining her knuckles. A shadow of a bruise spread across her knuckles.

Maybe she hadn't escaped her little exchange with Lily completely unscathed.

"That looks painful," I said.

I had the satisfaction of seeing her jump in surprise. Sometimes life around here could be boring. This girl made me laugh. Maybe it was cruel, using her to piss off Lily. Pissing off Lily could get the poor girl killed. But she was just a human and I didn't get a lot of chances to amuse myself.

"Yeah, well... your girlfriend's an android, so hitting her metal skeleton kind of takes it out of a girl," she said flippantly.

I grinned. Sarcasm. Unusual. Most of the human girls I knew were too intimidated by Lily and her posse of princesses to crack jokes. Of course, most of them wouldn't have hit her, either. And most of the witches I knew were prejudicial bitches who treated me like vermin.

"Can I sit here?"

"For how long?"

My grin stretched wider.

"The rest of the year," I told her, and her jaw dropped.

This was going to be so much fun.


	8. Paint 0 Alyssa

Neon blue tempera paint does not come out of clothes at all. Luckily, it comes out of hair with some washing or I'd have gotten twenty-five to life for murder.

It wasn't the guy. Jeez, I didn't even know his name. But it wasn't him. It wasn't Lily, either, irritatingly enough. It was some brunette girl I didn't even know, that I'd never spoken to in my freaking life. She'd just waltzed on by me and then she'd dumped a can of paint on my head!

I would've punched her. Really, I had my fist clenched and everything, but that guy beat me to it.

"Julie," Lily's boyfriend growled, grabbing the girl's hand. "That wasn't very kind of you."

"She hit Lily."

"You're lucky I haven't hit _you_, yet," I snapped, rising to my feet, dripping paint like cyan blood. My hair was drenched, and a hush had fallen over the class. Even Ms. O'Brien was watching, lips pursed, brown eyes narrowed. I cocked my arm back, ready to slam my fist into her face. Now, usually I'm not a violent person. No, really. But she dumped paint on my head.

Let me repeat that.

Paint.

On my head.

So yeah, I was about to hit her.

"Allow me," the guy said.

I glanced at him, surprised. Odd. Usually, boys are like, "No, I can't hit girls. It's wrong." I hated it when guys said that. As if I couldn't punch their lights out or beat them over the head with a baseball bat or a crowbar or something. Still... why was Lily's boyfriend offering to beat up one of her groupies? I didn't trust it.

And why wasn't the teacher stepping in?

Lily, I saw, was staring at Ms. O'Brien, whose brown eyes were locked with hers. I could feel the tension rolling off of them both, but somehow, I knew that the blonde would win. She had some bizarre power here. I didn't understand it, but I'd figure it out.

"Thanks but no thanks. She's not worth it."

I felt Lily's eyes on me and turned to smirk at her. How do you smirk when you're covered in blue tempera? Just natural talent, I guess.

"See ya around, ice bitch," I hissed at the girl, and barked at her. She jumped. Jeez, was I that scary?

Of course I had to go home to get this freaking paint off. I wasn't going to wash this off in the school bathroom. There was just no way it would work. Five-foot-five me was too big to fit in one of those sinks. I needed to wash the blue out of my hair. Blue paint and red hair didn't mix well. No, you didn't get purple. And I was eighteen, so I could sign myself out and leave campus if I had a car.

I froze on the front steps.

Crap.

I didn't have a car.

"Need a ride?"

I whirled around, arm immediately cocking, and I almost swung before I realized that it was that guy - Lily's boyfriend. Great, was he going to hassle me? Was he the truancy police for Principal Showalter? So I hadn't signed myself out like I was supposed to. So what? My parents paid over ten thousand dollars to pop me into this school.

What a waste of money.

"What?"

"Do you need a ride?" He repeated as if I were dumb.

"No."

"Sure about that?"

"Yeah."

"Can you speak with words longer than one syllable?"

Against my will, I smiled and nodded, dropping my arm. I wasn't getting The Vibe off of him. You know The Vibe - that sense of malice and cruelty that you pick up from some people. If I hadn't been so distracted when I ran into Lily, I'd have felt it off her. But it wasn't on the boyfriend. Maybe he wasn't so bad. Maybe he was just stupid.

He was dating the blonde, after all.

"Sorry. New school."

"You always act like you're in a war zone when you hit a new school?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"Good," he replied, surprising me. "You'll fit right in. Lemme give you a ride."

Pursing my lips, I thought about it. Walk home in the sweltering heat with paint drying in my hair, or ride around in a car with a strange psychopathic boy I didn't know who was dating some girl who'd slapped me for no reason?

I snatched my can of Mace out of the depths of my backpack. Tossing it up and grabbing it out of the air, I nodded and smiled.

"Yeah, I'll take a ride."

He didn't even bat an eye at the Mace.


	9. Mace 0 Alyssa

Of course I had to go home to get this freaking paint off. I wasn't going to wash this off in the school bathroom. There was just no way it would work. Five-foot-five me was too big to fit in one of those sinks. I needed to wash the blue out of my hair. Blue paint and red hair didn't mix well. No, you didn't get purple. And I was eighteen, so I could sign myself out and leave campus if I had a car.

I froze on the front steps.

Crap.

I didn't have a car.

"Need a ride?"

I whirled around, arm immediately cocking, and I almost swung before I realized that it was that guy - Lily's boyfriend. Great, was he going to hassle me? Was he the truancy police for Principal Showalter? So I hadn't signed myself out like I was supposed to. So what? My parents paid over ten thousand dollars to pop me into this school.

What a waste of money.

"What?"

"Do you need a ride?" He repeated as if I were dumb.

"No."

"Sure about that?"

"Yeah."

"Can you speak with words longer than one syllable?"

Against my will, I smiled and nodded, dropping my arm. I wasn't getting The Vibe off of him. You know The Vibe - that sense of malice and cruelty that you pick up from some people. If I hadn't been so distracted when I ran into Lily, I'd have felt it off her. But it wasn't on the boyfriend. Maybe he wasn't so bad. Maybe he was just stupid.

He was dating the blonde, after all.

"Sorry. New school."

"You always act like you're in a war zone when you hit a new school?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"Good," he replied, surprising me. "You'll fit right in. Lemme give you a ride."

Pursing my lips, I thought about it. Walk home in the sweltering heat with paint drying in my hair, or ride around in a car with a strange psychopathic boy I didn't know who was dating some girl who'd slapped me for no reason?

I snatched my can of Mace out of the depths of my backpack. Tossing it up and grabbing it out of the air, I nodded and smiled.

"Yeah, I'll take a ride."

He didn't even bat an eye at the Mace.


	10. Ride 0 Alyssa

"What's your name?" I asked.

He glanced at me, then at the Mace in my hand, and grinned, flashing his even, white teeth. His blond hair whipped around his head. Despite the bizarre number of midges buzzing around this desert, he still drove his convertible with the top down. My face had cobalt lash marks from my hair. How this guy avoided eating his own curls, I had no idea.

"Jack," he told me, hanging one arm over the rolled-down window. "Jack Knightly."

"Alyssa Carde." I started to hold out my hand to shake, but then I realized it was covered in sapphire splatter. And he was driving. Wouldn't want to make the boyfriend crash. So I tucked it back into the crook of my arm, hoping he hadn't noticed the gesture.

"I know," he said. "Lily's made a point of letting everyone know she hates you."

"Well, whoop-de-do for her," I muttered, crossing my blue arms over my blue chest. Was I turning his fancy-schmancy, white leather bucket seat blue, too? You bet. Did he seem to notice or care? Oddly enough, no. "What's her problem, anyway?" I kicked my backpack for emphasis.

"You're new, so I'm going to let you in on a little secret," he said, sliding into the far right lane. We were coming up on Stoker Street, where my house was. "Pillar High has two factions, and only two factions - white and red. Lily is white, and Geneva Carson is red. It's like the Sharks and the Jets, except with colors instead of ethnicity."

I arched my eyebrow.

"You've seen _West Side Story_?"

He laughed. He had a nice laugh, rich and full of vibrato, like velvet. It was an adult laugh, though, which made me look at him a little closer. Was he a fifth-year senior? No, because Pillar High didn't take anyone below a D average and he'd have had to flunk twelfth grade. So why did he sound so grown-up just then?

"Several times. Anyway, you made an enemy of Lily. She's used to getting her own way. That makes you Geneva's flunky right away."

"It's going to be a right onto Stoker. And I'm not her flunky," I added, practically spitting out the words. Jeez, a flunky? Who's a flunky? "I don't even know anyone named Geneva."

"You don't know... oh, right, you haven't been to lunch. Well, tomorrow during lunch period, then, you'll probably meet Geneva - she's hard to miss. She's obnoxious, though, just to warn you. You two probably wouldn't get along."

"I can't really trust your opinion on girls," I told him frankly. My hands frantically tried to keep the blue-coated strands of my hair from whipping into my mouth. I didn't know if tempera was toxic, but I didn't want to risk poisoning myself by accident. "You're dating Lily-the-Lunatic. You'd probably consider Mother Teresa a bad influence."

His mouth tightened and he glared at the road. Crap. Had I said something to piss him off? My thumb stroked the nozzle of my Mace can.

"I'm not dating Lily," he said through clenched teeth.

"Huh?"

"She's not my girlfriend."

I'll admit it: I gawped at him again. My mouth popped open, my eyes bugged out, and everything. So, apparently Mr. Stud-Muffin from Mars wasn't dating the blond psycho, but he hung out with her anyway even though he didn't really seem to like her all that much? Was I missing something or was it just me?

"Are you dating one of her posse?"

"I would honestly rather eat crap-flavored dirt," he informed me deliberately. "They're all idiots."

"Are you gay?"

I had to make sure.

He shot me a confused look before signaling and hanging a right onto my street. I kept my eyes open, but I lived at 221B and we were in 1045D. We had about twenty minutes of winding residential road before we got to my house. Hopefully, my parents wouldn't be home. Glancing at Jack, I realized he was still eyeing me with a puzzled look on his face.

"What?" I said.

"Why would you think I was gay?"

"Are you?"

"No."

"Just checking," I said. "Don't be offended, it has nothing to do with your masculinity." Hell, no, it didn't. A guy like that? Blond, with eyes like twin onyxes against tan skin and the lean muscles of a weight lifter who worked more for tone than bulk, Jack Knightly looked like he'd just crawled off the cover of Playgirl. I was salivating just thinking about it. "I was only wondering why Blondie didn't have her hooks all in you, since you were so close to her. It would make sense if you had a boyfriend."

"I'm single."

Oh, really?


	11. Initial Assault 0 Alyssa

Next morning, the battle with Lily-the-Loon began in earnest.

First, someone tripped me getting on the bus. Usually I didn't fall for that, but I'd had to soak in the tub until two in the morning, so I was a bit on the fuzzy and numb side. I didn't fall, just managed to grab two of the seats, haul myself back upright, and kick the perpetrator in the shin.

Of course, it was some wimpy guy I didn't know. He yelped when my engineer booted foot hit his shin bone.

The bus ride sucked.

I sat staring out the window, thinking about Jack Knightly while the air conditioner feebly battled the end-of-summer desert heat. Shimmers wavered above the pavement everywhere I looked.

Jack was a puzzle. After he'd stated his un-taken status, he'd clammed up like a... well, like a clam, and refused to say another word. But he wasn't dating Lily, wasn't dating one of the Princess Posse, and was about as gay as the school flagpole, which shot straight up into the sky like a steel spike. So a single, hot guy was hanging around Lily Whitmoor for what reason?

He seemed nice enough. So why associate with a psycho and therefore end up labeled psycho by association?

Something smacked into the back of my head.

Gritting me teeth, struggling not to just fly off the handle and punch the nearest Lily lackey, I reached up behind my head and touched something sticky and slimy. As my fingers probed it, a horrified realization settled into my brain.

There was gum in my hair.

Freaking gum.

It took me the rest of the bus ride to pull it out. The wad came away fairly easily since someone had only thrown it at me, not smashed it onto my head. But in the end, I had to rip out a bunch of individual hairs coated in sticky pink and mint green tack. Rage made my movements jerky. The stinging pain in my scalp made my eyes burn.

As if things couldn't get any worse, someone had the bright idea to shove me when I was getting off the bus. I fell and scraped my palms on the sidewalk.

When I sprang back up, foaming at the mouth and ready to start pulling some hair, there was no one close enough to designate them a target. In fact, everyone made a point to stay away from me as I trudged to my locker.

Maybe Blondie had put the word out.

Because I was expecting it, the green slime that exploded out of my locker missed me. Good thing I hadn't gotten any text books or put anything else in there yesterday. The only thing that was spattered with jade glop was the locker itself, the locker beneath mine, and the floor. I hid behind the aluminum door, chewing on my tongue and thinking really hard. In less than one hour, four really annoying things had happened to me. I had no doubt in my mind that they were orchestrated by Lily.

"That was smart thinking."

I knew that voice.

Jack Knightly lounged against the lockers on the other side of my personal disaster zone, hands in the pockets of his navy blue designer jeans. His button-down white shirt was open at the neck, showcasing his chest. No chest hair, big plus. I wanted a boyfriend, not a German shepherd.

"I've played the prank game before," I told him, shutting my locker gently. The movement belied my fury, but slamming a locker generally just got me clocked in the nose by a big metal door.

Not on my agenda today.

"Watch out in history," he told me, showing his teeth in a cocky grin. Shrugging languidly, he shoved off of the lockers and strode away.

Memo: wipe off drool before going to history class.


	12. Hattie 0 Jack

It definitely was unfair, but she was so funny.

I knew about the pranks planned for the day, of course. Lily made sure I knew. She valued my opinion on her cruelty. So I knew about the tripping, the gum, the pushing, and the slime bomb. I also knew what was planned for all of Alyssa's classes. Lily was nothing if not organized, and when she decided to come down on someone, most would do well to run for cover.

But I had the feeling that Alyssa Carde wouldn't be cowed by Lily's initial attack.

My fair and fairly brutal lady always started small. If Alyssa hadn't caved by the middle of first quarter, she would pull out the big guns.

Magic.

The Whitmoor magic was dangerous. Few witch families rivaled theirs for power; the Carsons, certainly, which was the root of Lily and Geneva's rivalry. But after that... maybe the Pillar family, who'd founded the school. But they weren't _really_ witches, so they didn't count.

Would Alyssa be able to last long enough for Lily to whip up something truly nasty? I had no idea. She was only human, after all.

"You shouldn't encourage her."

I glanced over at Hattie Marshal, another slave trapped in the web of the witch families. She was Geneva's pawn and, like me, hated her mistress.

"Don't know what you mean," I drawled, shoving my hands in my pockets.

From the corner of my eye, I saw her fiddling with her plethora of keychains. If it had anything to do with gambling - dice, playing card symbols, poker chips - it jingled on the chain attached to Hattie's wallet. She twiddled it like most people twiddled their thumbs: only when she was bored, or incredibly nervous.

"She's an innocent, Jack. You shouldn't encourage her to pit herself against Lily."

"Oh, so I should just let Geneva snap her up?"

Hattie flushed. A top-hat-wearing skeleton jangled on her chain.

"That's not what I meant. Lily's going to destroy her if you let the new girl keep on throwing herself against what Lily's throwing back at her."

"Go to class, Hattie," I told her, ignoring the prickle of unease between my shoulder blades. Geneva's flunky shot me a hateful look, hot with disgust, and stormed off towards her first period while I tried to ignore what she'd said.

_Lily's going to destroy her...._

Yeah, she certainly was. Alyssa couldn't stand up to Lily forever. And the moment she tripped, stumbled, missed a trick - Lily would be there to take her down completely.

And I couldn't have done anything about it if I'd wanted to.


	13. Pranks 0 Alyssa

I'll give you a basic rundown of the pranks before lunch.

**History:** spit wads, paper balls, and whispered insults. Someone save me! One kid grabbed my ass and I hit him, cutting my hand on his braces.

**Art:** nothing. Lily kept looking around, waiting, but I think Jack's cold, obsidian eyes frightened away any idiots who might've wanted to mess with me. Or it might have been my blood knuckles.

**English:** tripped twice, hair pulled three times, and some idiot hooked his foot around the back legs of my desk and dragged me around a bit. It finally stopped when I copied him, doing it to the girl in front of me. She cussed him out and I was left in peace.

**Homeroom**: books knocked on the floor, chair yanked out as I tried to sit down (no I didn't fall, what kind of a yutz do you think I am?), and another storm of spit wads and paper balls. Jeez, what was this, second grade?

And at lunch, oh glory of glories, I finally met Geneva Carson.


	14. Geneva 0 Alyssa

Red.

It was all I could see for a moment, so blinded was I by the tackiness of Geneva's clothes. Scarlet Prada heels; black leggings, that were just barely gray against the pasty whiteness of her skin; a skin-tight crimson miniskirt that showcased all of her just-shy-of-cellulite butt fat; and a red tank top underneath a black sweater to hide her still-quite-visible white bra straps.

A posse of similarly dressed girls followed after her. I think her candy apple red dye job and Day-Glo red manicure alerted the cafeteria to her presence because a bunch of other kids who'd been chatting with their friends got up and ran over to her.

"That's Geneva Carson?"

They had to be kidding me.

"Yep," Jack said from behind me in the lunch line, and I jumped, whirled on him. He wasn't looking at me, though. His obsidian eyes were locked on the five-foot-nine, hundred-eighty-pound Geneva. "There she is, the Red Queen herself."

"The Red Queen?" I echoed, frowning.

"Lily is the White Queen, and Geneva the Red."

"Like in _Through the Looking Glass_?" I asked. He barked a laugh and grabbed an apple from the lunch laid out for us all. He held it out to me, but I shook my head and drawled, voice drowning in sarcasm, "Oh, no, thank you, _Satan._"

"They're not really queens or anything," Jack went on as I grabbed a slice of pizza. Someone had already shoved in front of me, but when their face connected with the metal bar denoting where the line began, no one else tried it.

It wasn't my fault. He tripped over my coincidentally placed foot trying to shove past me. The bozo only lost one tooth and there was hardly any blood.

"Then why-"

"It's like a nickname," he said. "It puts the factions in their places. At Pillar, you've got two choices - red or white, Geneva or Lily."

"Ha," I said. "Well, I pick 'or.' How's _that_ for individuality?"

Jack opened his mouth to reply, that cocky grin stretching his lips, but right then a girl with fire engine red lipstick and pink eye shadow ran up to us, panting for breath. From her oxygen-deprived state, I assumed she was a message runner or something for either Lily or Geneva. Since she had on red makeup, it was probably Geneva.

"Go away," Jack snapped.

"Geneva wants to talk to the new girl," the girl managed to gasp out. She looked like a marathon had snuck up behind her and yelled "Boo!" But she'd called me "new girl." Bleh, I hated that.

"I have a date with some molten mozzarella," I informed her. "Sorry."

I strode past the girl, whose eyes flew open like I'd slapped her or sprouted octuplied compound eyes, and I slouched onto the bench of an unoccupied lunch table. The happy pizza found its blissful way into my ecstatic mouth, but my nirvana was interrupted by Jack Knightly plunking himself down opposite me.

"What," my food splatted at him, the words barely intelligible.

"Heads up," he warned, flicking his eyes over my shoulder. I had just enough time to swallow and turn around before Geneva Carson plopped herself down next to me, smiled, and cracked open her can of Diet Coke.

My eye started to twitch.

"Can I help you?" I demanded.

"Can't I eat lunch with the new girl?"

"Not if you don't want to eat tabletop," I told the Red Queen, dragging my eyebrows down into a tight, auburn V of irritation. Who did this red-haired bimbo think she was? Who did she think _I_ was? "The 'new girl' is taking no visitors at the moment. Please see the receptionist on your way out and we'll schedule an appointment."

"For when?" She smiled dazzlingly at me. Her perfectly bleached teeth glittered like sunlight on snow. For those of you who don't live in places like Hell-Frozen-Over, Montana, snow glare can make you go blind.

"Um, how about two days from never?"

Her friendly smile disappeared on the word "never." I could open my eyes without tearing up now. Yay - I had a clear view of Geneva's candy red hair and poison green eyes, her brightly lipsticked mouth and the rage twisting what might have been an otherwise beautiful face into a hideous mask.

"How about _now_?" She hissed.

Something made me glance at Jack. I didn't know why. But I did, and what I saw in his face made me pause and take a step back, reassess my position with Geneva at that point. I couldn't believe the emotion on his face.

Fear.


	15. Fangs 0 Jack

"Let's try that again: what can I do for you, Geneva?"

Alyssa had glanced at my face, a brief flick of her golden brown eyes, and all of her attitude disappeared, frost melting in the sun. She leaned closer to Geneva, the spill of her hair falling between her face and my view. I couldn't see her expression. What was she thinking about? Was she about to throw a wrench into my plans for pissing off Lily? Or was she going to cooperate?

"Lily really doesn't like you," Geneva Carson told Alyssa in a confidential whisper.

I could see, through the veil of auburn hair, the new girl's lips curving into a sardonic half-smile. She lifted her head, shaking back her hair, and a slender vein popped out against the pale flesh of her neck.

Saliva pooled in my mouth. My eyes narrowed to slits as I zoomed in on that tiny little thread of blood vessel throbbing with blood. Sweat slicked my palms.

"I've noticed," Alyssa said, and arched her neck again.

My fangs popped out of my gums.

Crap.


	16. Red Punch 0 Alyssa

"I've noticed," I said.

Across from me, I heard Jack suck in a breath. Surreptitiously glancing at him from behind my hair, the first thing I saw was the stricken expression on his face. Before, when I'd been snarking at Geneva, there'd been fear, but this was somehow worse than that. The abstract horror on his face snared my attention and I looked away from Geneva's flapping lips even though I could hear every word she said.

"I think I can help you," she was saying. "After all, Lily's always been a friend of mine. I think I could talk to her, get her to back off a little."

"Really?" I murmured distractedly, my eyes locking with an obsidian gaze full of dazed panic. Sweat dripped off of Jack's face like rain from a thunderstorm. Was he all right? His usually tanned face had blanched white as limestone, tinged faintly green. Trying to keep focused on the Red Queen, I added, "And here I thought the Red Queen and the White Queen were rivals."

"Oh, you heard about that, did you?" She tittered like Airhead Barbie on "repeat," grating on my nerves.

I only nodded, keeping my eyes on Jack Knightly.

His throat worked convulsively, as if he were about to barf. Was he sick? The pools of sweat at his temples had plastered his blond hair to his forehead. I reached out, one hand sliding slowly across the table top, and he jerked away from me like I'd bitten a chunk out of him.

"Jack? Jack, are you okay?"

"I, uh... I don't feel quite myself," he mumbled, running a hand through his drenched hair. "Sorry, I just... I feel a bit ill."

"Suck it up, Knightly," Geneva snarled, and I reacted immediately, without thinking.

Yet another of my stellar, bad idea.

"Hey, shut up! He's sick, leave him alone!" Like the childish, juvenile teenage girl that I am, I shoved her lunch tray down the table, away from where we sat. An instant hush from the rest of the cafeteria punched my eardrums. I punched it right back with, "Who do you think you are, anyway? You send your little lackey to call me like I'm your dog, you invade my personal lunch space, you lie to me, right to my face, and then you treat one of my friends like dirt!"

I didn't know where any of this was coming from, but I could've ranted about it all day. Ever since the paint incident yesterday, I'd been sweating for a fight - with anyone. Add all the pranks of today to my irritation meter, and I was about to blow my gasket sky-freaking-high.

"How dare you!" Geneva lunged to her feet, her red hair flaming, her green eyes spitting poison. "You, you're nothing compared to me. How dare you!"

"Oh, shut up, Red," I snapped, stung by the "nothing" part. Nothing, was I?

She tensed up. I should've expected what happened next, but when her hand darted out and her palm made first contact with the side of my face, I'll admit I was a bit surprised. How many people were going to slap me this year?

I reared back and planted my fist squarely in her face.


	17. To Fight 0 Alyssa

Have you ever been in a rip-roaring fist fight for your life in the middle of a high school cafeteria with no teachers around?

It's awesome.

End of freaking story.


	18. Poetry 0 Jack

Watching Alyssa's fist smash into Geneva's face was like seeing poetry in motion.

The redhead toppled backwards, tripping over the bench and cracking her head on the floor. Then there was nothing.

Nothing but pandemonium.

Someone leapt at Alyssa, who dodged by plopping her denim-clad butt back onto the bench, jerking her feet up, and dragging them out from under the lunch table. Her swinging tennis shoes smacked into another girl's belly, winding her. Then the new girl was on her feet, fists tight, body braced to fight.

"Bitch!"

I glanced over and saw Geneva struggling to her feet, hate blazing in her eyes like burning rattlesnake venom. Snarling curses, the Red Queen attained her feet. She shoved away her concerned flunkies and, raising her arm and pointing it at Alyssa, twisted her fingers into a cruel, claw-like shape. The fluorescent lights glinted off of her blood red nails, and a shiver ran up my spine.

Was Alyssa about to get hit with one of Geneva's killer spells?


End file.
